A long time ago I mentioned my friend Steve Guttenberg. Not that one. Steve is a freelance writer and artist and likes to hook up extremely expensive audio and video equipment in his apartment and relax to aural nirvana. He has been feeding my vinyl craze. And my TFK craze. Recently he got an absurdly expensive turntable, the googlifonic kind with a moonrock needle. He played it for me. It went to eleven standing still. I in turn have been setting him up with photoshop techniques and he has gone a very long way in two years. He photographs, and then, well, I’m not sure. This comes out…
Dancers
The part I haven’t told you is that Steve really can’t see that well. He is legally blind. A birth defect left him with impaired vision, but as a child he used to stare at the sun wide eyed because the colour effects that he was seeing were irresistible. The resulting scars on his retina made things worse. But that didn’t stop Steve from eventually becoming a movie projectionist in New York in the Eighties. Did I mention that when you meet Steve, he will tell you a story. And then another. Possibly a third. All fascinating. You see, you want a paranoid projectionist! Focus! Steve brought binoculars into the booth to see better. So he was constantly on the lookout for blurry images. It makes sense if you let it.
Montauk #3
Digital cameras for Steve are like bionic eyes. He can see things very close up. Like a computer monitor from about 3 inches. And also an LCD on the back of a camera. Viewfinders are useless to him, ah, but on a preview you can magnify your picture…10x or more. All of a sudden, distant details are visible. Steve literally takes pictures to see what things look like. Which is by definition, is what a photographer does. And very Winograndian.
The Corner
We are up to 30% of my TFK pledge. More contributors to come.
Over on the Resolve blog this quote from Marc Asnin
I also think you should dress for who you are. I don’t know if people still do that, but when I was a kid, you had to get dressed up for everything. I’m not saying show up as a slob, but you know, I’ve had some interns show up in suits. I’m like, listen, never wear a tie to meet me. You’re in the photo world in New York now. No one wears a tie, man.
So what do you think? I have had to wear a tie but once-photographing in the New York Stock Exchange. Not even in the White House was I required to wear a tie, although I was shooting behind the scenes and not at a State Dinner. I have had to photograph a lot of ‘Guy’s in Tie’s’ (GITS) and generally felt for them on hot days.
This morning I got a letter from William Schmidt, deputy managing editor of the NYT. My hand trembled as I opened the envelope. (there was no envelope) Maybe the “Weekender” is coming in a new Coach Edition with matching leather gloves for smudge free reading?
TO: ALL FREELANCE PHOTOGRAPHERS
This is a reminder of The Times’s policies on digital manipulation or other alteration of photos.
As you know, under the contract you signed for The Times, you warrant that any photo submitted for publication “will be original and unaltered (unless it is a photo illustration, pre-approved by your editor and fully disclosed in caption information materials).”
The Times takes this obligation very seriously; the integrity of photographs and other material we publish goes to the heart of our credibility as a news organization. The prohibition on unauthorized alteration of photos applies to all sections of the paper, the Magazine and the Web site.
This passage from the newsroom’s “Guidelines on Our Integrity” explains our rules in more detail:
Photography and Images. Images in our pages, in the paper or on the Web, that purport to depict reality must be genuine in every way. No people or objects may be added, rearranged, reversed, distorted or removed from a scene (except for the recognized practice of cropping to omit extraneous outer portions). Adjustments of color or gray scale should be limited to those minimally necessary for clear and accurate reproduction, analogous to the “burning” and “dodging” that formerly took place in darkroom processing of images. Pictures of news situations must not be posed.
In some sections, and in magazines, where a photograph is used to serve the same purposes as a commissioned drawing or painting – as an illustration of an idea or situation or as a demonstration of how a device works, etc. – it must always be clearly labeled as a photo illustration. This does not apply to portraits or still-lifes (photos of food, shoes, etc.), but it does apply to other kinds of shots in which we have artificially arranged people or things, as well as to collages, montages, and photographs that have been digitally altered.
If you have any questions about what is permissible under the rules, please consult the assigning editor.
Sincerely, William E. Schmidt Deputy Managing Editor The New York Times Newspaper Division of The New York Times Company
The gloves will have to wait. But they have come off. Obviously some battening down of hatches is going on after the Edgar Martins débâcle. It is to be expected. It is also the first time I have ever gotten any official direction in writing with respect to “a policy” on alteration…well corporate communication is always an oxymoron. I did know what was permissible out of common sense. You wonder who doesn’t? As for that bit about consulting your editor if you have a question, well, in my experience Photoshop is most useful to them as a box to make the monitor higher. Raw converters, high radius sharpening, LAB colour, moire, curves vs. levels, shadow-highlight, none of this is going to get you more than a wha? Honestly, it is not their job to understand digital capture technology or be digital referees. Their job is to understand pictures and make intelligent assignments. They do this very well.
Part of the reason I was approached by the Times to do work for them was that I was outside of the newspaper world. I had not cut my teeth on newspapers, I did not go to J-school, I had never shot a grin and grab nor a high school soccer game. I don’t have that memory bank of solutions to photo problems that go through a 24mm lens close to the subject if you know what I mean. Which is not to disparage what journalists have to do. There are necessary limits implied by the mandate, I will get back to that.
My development in photography had come totally through editorial magazine work, and the editors that were calling were also veterans of that world. Their learning curve was steep also. While some may have had experience on newsmagazines or financial reporting, none had significant newspaper backgrounds. But the sections I was being assigned to were not “news” sections, it was feature fare like Dining, Arts, Style. I was not being asked to “report” on anything. I still got chastised early and often however for my scant captions. I figured the less I said the better. I did not want the responsibility of reporting, since I am not trained. My mandate is to take the intelligent handoff from an editor and make good pictures in my style. That’s what they wanted me for. Which is not reporting, probably not journalism, and may or may not be reality either. By the standards above, almost everything I was assigned was a photo-illustration, in that I directed people, moved furniture and generally futzed around until I got the photograph that I wanted, whether it was a portrait, a still life or interior. This is standard editorial practice.
In some sections, and in magazines, where a photograph is used to serve the same purposes as a commissioned drawing or painting – as an illustration of an idea or situation or as a demonstration of how a device works, etc. – it must always be clearly labeled as a photo illustration. This does not apply to portraits or still-lifes (photos of food, shoes, etc.), but it does apply to other kinds of shots in which we have artificially arranged people or things, as well as to collages, montages, and photographs that have been digitally altered.
“Illustrations of ideas or situations” might encompass any situation where I was present and made choices about photographing a person or group. But portraits and still life gets a pass evidently, unless the “people or thing” is “artificially arranged”, which takes me back in a circle to almost all portraits and all still life. I am no clearer after this clarification. (secret answer: there may be no answer to this for newspapers, read on…)
Tangential to that, (going somewhere, I promise) my cable provider has seen fit to scramble the location of the channels, I now have C-Span and NY-1 in the low digits. I am enjoying the Wendy Williams show for the first time. How You Doing? Fine, thank you, and getting up early on Sunday mornings for my long runs means that I get back around 10am, just in time for Richard D. Heffner’s excellent program “An Open Mind” broadcast from SUNY somewhere upstate, NY. For the last two weeks he has been interviewing Alex S. Jones, an authority on media issues, Pulitzer Prize winner and former New York Times staffer through much of the eighties. He has a new book out called “Losing the News” “The Future of the News That Feeds Democracy.” Here is an excerpt from chapter one, “The Iron Core”:
Imagine a sphere of pitted iron, grey and imperfect like a large cannonball. Think of this dense, heavy ball as the total mass of each day’s serious reported news, the iron core of information that is at the center of a functioning democracy. This iron core is big and unwieldy, reflecting each day’s combined output of all the professional journalism done by news organizations — newspapers, radio and television news, news services such as the Associated Press and Reuters, and a few magazines. Some of its content is now created by new media, nonprofits, and even, occasionally, the supermarket tabloids, but the overwhelming majority still comes from the traditional news media.
This iron core does not include Paris Hilton’s latest escapade or an account of the Yankees game or the U.S. Open. It has no comics or crossword puzzle. No ads. It has no stories of puppies or weekend getaways or recipes for cooking great chili. Nor does it include advice on buying real estate, investing in an IRA, movie reviews, or diet advice. There is nothing wrong with any of these things. Indeed, pleasant and diverting stories are far more appealing to most people than the contents of the core, which some find grim, boring, or riddled with bias.
It has no editorials and does not include the opinions of columnists or op-ed writers or political bloggers. These things are derived from the core. They are made possible because there is a core. Their point of departure is almost always information gleaned from the reporting that gives the core its weight, and they serve to spread awareness of the information that is in the core, to analyze it and interpret it and challenge it. Opinion writers pick and choose among what the core provides to find facts that will further an argument or advance a policy agenda. But they are outside the core, because they almost always offer commentary and personal observation, not original reporting.
Inside the core is news from abroad, from coverage of the war in Iraq to articles describing the effort to save national parks in Mozambique. There is news of politics, from the White House to the mayor’s office. There is an account of a public hearing on a proposal to build new ball fields and an explanation of a regional zoning concept that might affect property values. There is policy news about Medicare reform and science news about global warming. There is news of business, both innovation and scandal, and even sporting news of such things as the abuse of steroids. An account of the battle within the local school board about dress codes is there, along with the debate in the state legislature over whether intelligent design should be taught as science. The iron sphere is given extra weight by investigative reports ranging from revelations that prisoners at the county jail are being used to paint the sheriff’s house to the disclosure that the government is tapping phones without warrants as part of the war on terror.
Alex feels we are eroding this Core, and are at risk of losing it altogether. The core cannot be maintained in any type of “free” way. Basic reporting is like digging ditches, rarely any glamour involved, you are not going to get an intern to go to Afghanistan for free to do this. It requires resources and commitment over the long haul. Notice also the distinction he makes between original reporting and opinion and analysis. Without the core, you cannot have the rest.
…So I get this email this morning reminding us all about the standards and practices involved and it makes me think-how do you square this circle? In other words, in trying to create a product more interesting to more people newspapers have enlarged the scope of their coverage well beyond the confines of the iron core that Alex talks about. Tthey have done this for a long time, except with staff photographers. Lately they have seen fit to hire outside the choir you could say. Which gets you Edgar Martins, an art star who has no connection to print and obviously no concern. Or it gets you Nadav Kander, (who I love) and a set of completely manipulated portraits that passes muster because as I read above, portraits and still life can be called photographs, except when they are photo illustrations. So is it not a photo illustration to completely change and insert a background? The Magazine, the website and the Newspaper all have to adhere to the same standard according to the letter above. If I am confused, imagine the lay reader.
Newspapers seem to be trying to have their cake and eat it too. The mandate to create compelling (which you can also read as trendy, fashionable, provocative) content may not always coincide with the mandate to report facts. When you start to mix up this iron core with sections from Agronomy to Zymurgy, (just leave my astrology thank you!) when you start to look outside the J-schools and newspaper ranks for editors and creatives, and when the pressure of the bottom line starts to pinch, then you get mission “creep”. Profit and ambition can compromise integrity, and the reader loses faith in the core itself. News becomes confused with info-tainment. Reporting start to look less like truth and more like the opinion of the newspaper owner.
We now are awash in opinion, mine included. I have no solution here but wanted to draw attention to Jones’ writing and his “core” idea. I believe that accountability reporting as he calls it is essential to our democracy. You are not watching your city council, but you know someone is. Dutifully, so that one day there is a paper trail, and a story can emerge of corruption or improvement. Technologists like to posit that the camera phone, the citizen journalist and the very transparency of information on the internet can provide what newspapers currently provide. But you cannot expect bloggers to be able to withstand the lawsuits that even a simple investigative piece could generate. Certainly that lone blogger could “tweet” for help but this is a naive fantasy. I heard Eric Schmidt of Google gush that the simplicity of fact checking on the internet means that politicians will have a harder time lying in public. Guess he has not tuned into C-Span lately. Maybe he needs to rescan his converter box to make sure he is getting all the channels…
Do you remember? The very first night of September? Love was changing the minds of pretenders, while chasing the clouds away…
Above: Stack o’ promos to go out. Don’t accuse me of being cynical about this photo business…
TFK UPDATE:
Thanks to some recent donations from the Mr and Mrs. Jackanory, Mr. and Mrs. Bumble, and Mr. and Mrs. Wright, we are sitting over $600 of $2500, that is more than 25% of the way there!
Above, the title of Fred Lebow’s memoir, “Anything for a T-shirt” he is one of the co-founders of the New York City Marathon. Below, 12 that I have gathered.
So I can twist this into being about photography if you follow me…
This year is the 40th running of the NYC marathon and it will be the largest field ever, with over 40,000 runners. What started 40 years ago with 127 entrants has morphed into a World Wide event that brings the city to a standstill for one day. Running is more popular than ever, in particular the growth of the Half-Marathon distance has been huge in the last few years. And with that, has come a measure of regret for those who enjoyed its less popular days. It has never been a big money sport, but increasingly some would argue, the purity of the sport is being lost. This was an opinion I ran across reading Christopher McDougalls book “Born to Run” about “the greatest race the world has never seen.” Particularly in the venue of ultra-marathoning, the athletes do it for the love of running since the awards are non-existent and the pain so great in running 50+miles. Why else could you do it?
Over about the same time frame photography has evolved from something that no one considered worth selling in a fine art gallery to being ubiquitous on the one hand, and in a few cases, valued at hundreds of thousands of dollars on the other. Consider that dichotomy. And along the way it has lost some of it’s innocence, I think there is no denying that. These are not the days of holing up in the Strand to read a copy of Weston’s Daybooks. Not that you can’t do that. But you will be passed by in short order by the latest Twitter update that Marcus and Idrani are “back from insolvency” or some other ridiculous thing.
What are we to make of this kind of inevitable change? Do all movements that get massively popular and more accessible become shadows of their former unpopular and scrawny selves? Is the experience of the sport or art cheapened both for the participants and the observers when the barriers to entry are lowered? Many would argue that the emergence (interesting word choice) of the popularity of the half-marathon distance has taken something away from the pinnacle of “full” marathon achievement. Also the inclusion of so many charity runners who will probably walk a good portion of the marathon is another erosion of what it means to some to complete “the” marathon (no full qualifier required).
Well by my own logic then I should not be in the New York City Marathon. And by my own deduction photography is dead. OH AUGUST HOW I LOVE THEE! Perhaps I can reorient a bit. It’s about the money and the attention. Now I am on solid ground. The explosion of the half marathon distance is a real money maker for those race organizers. I believe only Boston and NY have no concurrent half-marathon distance, while many or most of the big city marathons do, and inevitably all small city marathons do. It is just too easy to take the entrance fee when you are gonna be out there already. I am mixed on it. I do remember distinctly watching all the half-er’s finish in Long Branch, it was emotional for me because I was still proud of them for getting to the finish line. 13.1 is still 13.1. And when there are 6000 halfers and only 2000 marathoners, the crowd cheering for the halfers is bigger and less bored on their feet! So rounding the next turn I remarked to those around me, “glad we have all this room now to run” but no one seemed happy to hear it. We had it to do all over again.
Like those halfers, emerging photographers are paving a bright shining path for those offering contests, consulting, portfolio reviews, websites, tutorials, branding, you name it. Aging photographers are looking at their 401k’s and thinking, like that Masked Magician, if I can show you how to saw a pretty girl in half, or at least light her with a beauty dish hanging off a speedlight or two, I might sail off in the Good-Ship Retirement unscathed. Increasingly the long tail starts to wag the dog as the industry turns inwards to capitalize on its young. It is not a good sign when a business becomes about itself. Think Mary Kay.
It is difficult to determine what the factors are that contribute to these sudden swells of popularity. In running it might be a simple demographic shift where a large number of people suddenly reach an age where they no longer feel invincible. So heath issues come to the fore. Others have speculated that running in essence is the flight response made manifest, and so in times of hardship it kicks in. The first mass wave of jogging (that’s yogging with a soft “j”) popularity was in the 70′s, as we were slouching towards Reagan.
In photography as I have said, the combination of the consumer credit bubble, mass consumption driving digital technology downwards in price, and the internet bubble itself (which was fueled by the previous capital bubble boom-bust) created the perfect storm of cheap digital cameras and an internet to share the pictures. We are all photographers, we are all Kenyans. Overnight it seems.
I think it is unfortunate for the new crop of photographers to have to suffer the label “emerging” and the intensity of attention and expectation that this label generates. Part of it is obviously the velocity of information speed on the internet and our corresponding attention deficit. The pressure to produce attention grabbing work or work that garners grants and awards, to produce “books” and completed projects is overwhelming. In the history of photography there are many many late bloomers, a mass of undiscovered talent. But what does that mean, is that tragic? Discovery is only the first step in a career. There will always be a surfeit of work produced, but it is hard to tell if our motivation to find it and blog (and then probably forget it) is because the tools enable this, or that the tools create a demand for something new every facebook status update? And is it fair to our youngest and least experienced practitioners to focus on them this extraordinary amount of attention and energy? Is our concern the promotion of new work or the exploitation of new workers? When we lower the bar to access what does it do to the field as a whole?
It is clear our world is brimming with information but so lacking in direct experience, which by nature simply requires time on the planet. Rubber on the Road. The Trials of Miles. Fogged film holders. Sheet film on the bathroom floor. The marathon was created initially as an obstacle for the human body to transcend that few considered healthy or possible. But to experience that transformation you need to commit to the whole thing. Now, we have this intermediate goalpost, the “half”, which before was only an early milepost in training for the “full” distance. But half is a misnomer. It is only a mathematical half. It is not a factor of two for the body. When we make things more accessible do we alter the potential gift in return?
…
I got excited today signing up for all the fall runs that are coming, Grete’s Great Gallop, the Queen’s and Staten Island half’s, (maybe we should just call them 13.1 k’s?) the Joe Kleinerman 10k, some winter runs hopefully in the snow of Central Park. My experience of renewal in running means that the pure experience of photography is always available no matter how many photographers you see “crossing the finish line” next to you. And I realize that to a lot of running veterans, I am part of their problem! But choose how you experience any trial in life. And getting to the finish line is not really why we run. We run to run, we shoot to shoot. Like Fred was saying, “all for the t-shirt”, he’d show up for nothing really. Just to do it. I think photographers might want to accept less now in return for more later. We need more t-shirts! Bet you never thought you’d hear me argue for less reward in photography!
The title of this is copped from John L. Parker Jr.’s excellent book “Once a Runner.” I may do a review of running books in the future. It is easy enough to understand, a koan on trials, both olympic and personal, and the miles to get there.
Something to keep track of those miles? Perhaps you are considering purchasing a GPS training device like the Garmin 405? The 405 has been out for quite a long time, I only got mine after Mac support was provided. More on that later. I got the kit which included the heart rate monitor. A wireless usb dongle is responsible for getting the data off the watch and into your mainframe computing unit.
The first question might reasonably be, do I need this? If you are coming to this blog for the first time the history is that I began running in June of 2008 it what can only be described as a full on-midlife crisis. But I digress:) The first couple of months were primarily concerned with survival. It was hot, and there was a lot of phlegm. But that will pass young Skywalker, er, runner. Eventually I got a Nike sport kit for my ipod, well, I got a nike sport kit and I got an ipod. Again, I repeat, do I need this?
I think starting out the ipod provided a welcome distraction from my gasps for breath, my flapping footfalls and jangling keys. Eventually all that went away. I apologize to all the other runners. The Nike sport kit was useful for a long while, it does a reasonably accurate job of recording your pace and time and distance. But the caveat “your mileage may vary” has never been truer. If you contemplate doing tempo workouts or intervals, the Nike sport kit will get very, very confused. It also gets confused if you run faster than about 8 minutes per mile or have very short strides. Calibration is difficult. Nike has you run a specified distance to teach the unit I presume the number of strides you make to cover that distance. Getting the unit to be accurate to less than 10% is difficult, and if you intend on covering more than 10 miles, guess what? Exactly. Not.
So enter the Garmin 405. What was innovative about the 405 over previous models was that it looked more like a real watch, the size was not too big, the controls were minimized by using touch technology, and the wireless data transfer function was added. Depending on your point of view, all the additions were great or absolutely disastrous.
Speaking from my own experience these are the pluses and minuses:
The GPS function is very accurate over the terrain I have covered, meaning Brooklyn, Manhattan, the suburbs. I have not used the watch in dense forest or mountainous areas. But it does work under the tree cover I have experienced on light trails. If you tend to begin runs from the same point, the GPS will acquire a signal quickly and hold it. Later you can even see where you crossed from one side of the street to the other, the accuracy is to within a few meters.
There are a bewildering array of functions you can use, you can set GPS waypoints or use it to navigate. I have not explored any of this. What I use it for is monitoring pace, average pace, heart rate, distance and time. You can customize the data fields that are displayed, or have the watch auto scroll through the fields perpetually. I tend to like to see heart rate and either pace or average pace. When you check pace instantaneously you may be surprised, it can vary tremendously, about a minute either side of what you are actually doing. In practice you need to check a few times to make a mental average. Or you can use average pace, but this will be the total average, so if you are doing a tempo run for example, it will include the warm up lap which will distort the total. But overall you can get an accurate gauge of your pace at a point in time, and you quickly teach yourself through “biofeedback” what your pace and heart rate are based on your own internal GPS watch, which can be very accurate. Having used the watch now for 8 months I can tell within +/- 5 bpm my heart rate, and +/- 20 sec/mile my pace. But this is for paces that I know, as you get faster you will need to relearn the differences. I can tell a 8 minute mile from a seven minute mile, but beyond that, since I don’t regularly run tempos under 7, I have no idea. Later in my marathon training I have some speedwork at 6:51/mile assuming I can get there. I think I will be focused primarily on not puking.
So this is what it can do (and more) but what about usability? Touch technology is coming to us whether we want it or not. And for the most part, the iPhone and other touch enabled devices work very well. Where they have difficulty is in adverse conditions. Moisture interferes with most touch devices and the Garmin 405 is no exception. You would think that since running is often associated with, oh well, I don’t know, SWEATING, that this might have been a dealbreaker for some. It can be.
The instructions say that the watch is not to be immersed, although you can and probably should rinse the watch off after use. But overall the water resistance of even the two pushbuttons is somewhat sketchy. Sometimes they just don’t respond to repeated pushes, stabs, jabs, or profanity. And then a minute later all is fine. Same with the bezel. The “innovation” of the 405 was the inclusion of the touch bezel, that allows you to select functions by touch and scrolling, or circling around the bezel. On “dry land” this works fine. Throw in a little sweat or rain and it is easier to leave well enough alone and just let the watch count what it is counting. Attempting to access functions while the watch is wet is difficult. Not impossible. It makes the watch less reliable and you wonder why four sealed buttons would not have worked as well. I have learned to deal with it and I think the trade off is size. The newer Garmin 310XT is waterproof, aimed at triathletes, and is much larger overall. Or that could be the improved GPS part too.
With regard to the wireless data transfer, it makes sense to remove the usb port to improve water resistance, yet the watch is not really happy in water. So now you are adding another layer of difficulty in getting the data off the watch. And to be clear, there are two exposed charging pins, why you could not do data transfer and charging at the same time like the older larger 305 is one example of how improvements are not always improvements.
EDIT: June 2011- since I see there are many webviews for this entry I felt I should update it to reflect where we are now. On an Intel mac- currently a quad 2.3 tower from 2009- with snow leopard 10.6.7 in 64bit mode and Garmin Ant Agent 2.1.9, current firmware on the 405–it works as it should. The PowerPC support was stated as minimal, and it really didn’t get off the ground. When I got the tower at the beginning of the year it wouldn’t work in 64 bit mode, only 32 bit, but then in the spring an update has made it work for me and now when I come in after a run, if I put the watch near the tower it beeps pretty quickly and is done and uploaded before I can get the shoes off.
All of my observations about the touch bezel still apply- I try not to touch the bezel too much and lock it most of the time. I have the watch info fields set to show the data I need, and so I don’t need to be touching the watch during a workout.
For interval runs you can also program in a warmup, and a series intervals with rest intervals and if you remember to hit the right button at the end it all goes as planned. The more you familiarize yourself with the watch the better it works. In the course of a training schedule it does get to be pretty automatic.
I can’t speak to the experience on a PC, but the Mac support was long in coming, and now that it is here it is fair to say you might be less than impressed. I am using the software on an older PowerPC G5, which Garmin does not officially support but acknowledge that it does work. I can report, it does work. Period. (NOTE: there is a firmware upgrade for the 405 available but good luck getting it onto the watch! I l almost bricked my watch attempting it. Be very sure you need to bother before going down this road.)
…the trials of miles, gain, loss, max, avg, calories. where does it all end?
(picky readers will notice it says 19.57miles not 20 miles. I stopped the watch outside the park to buy a water and a banana for after, but did not restart the watch on the way home. Therefore: Never stop the watch! It does have a setting where it pauses when it detects you are not moving. Like that moment you collapse on the hill…)
The wireless ANT dongle (Another Needless Thing?) does not like going to sleep and waking up. You find yourself quitting the Garmin Ant Agent program, replugging the dongle, and relaunching the program. It may take a couple tries to sync. Eventually it gets done. Transfer to the Garmin website, well, YMMV again. Garmin has been rolling out a lot of software updates lately on their server side, I have found it easier to manually upload the data. Once uploaded you get a map of your workout, splits, averages, max values etc. You can generate reports of all your runs, although I cannot get average pace over many runs for some strange reason. Sometimes the simplest things…
That might be a suitable conclusion for this user review, “sometimes the simplest things.” I started out asking “do I need this?” It turns out that that is a very interesting question with regards to running overall. I cannot say there is an answer to that. Recently I started leaving the iPod at home, and found the experience very enjoyable. But sometimes, like last weekend and last night, it was fun to blast away with the tunes. I’m not much of a data junkie, however, keeping some kind of training log is essential I think, much like a daily journal, you can find insight in the record keeping. And the data is useful, you can see improvements, you can find encouragement, you can see how weather and time of day affect your performance. Or you can keep track of food and clothing, which is just as important. Gotta go back to ye olde paper and pen for that!
You don’t need any of this to run. A simple Timex will do, plus some indication of distance which is now available on websites like WalkJogRun.net or MapMyRun.com. Or just run dammit. I have no problem with that. If you are training for a distance event, I feel these devices do give you useful data that you can use during your runs to train better and more effectively. Just don’t expect to get a runners high off of them. That was what the running itself was for, remember?
Pros: size, accuracy, durability, website improvements hold out hope for better in the future from Garmin-and after a long while they delivered.
Cons: touch bezel is a mixed bag, Mac support is thin, wireless is unnecessary–ON INTEL everything fine….
Overall: maybe you can get it used? And used to it…Not as bad as all the above.
For perspective, my last marathon training program topped out at 44 miles maximum. There were only two 40+ mile weeks in the last go round. Now I have ahead of me two more months of 40+ mile weeks, going up to 54 miles at the peak. (40, 44, 35, 46, 49, 51, 41, 54, 42, 28, 38) Aye Carrumba!
I caught a serious break on Sunday with the overcast skies and mid-temperatures. The rain was a help too. Does anyone actually make a fabric that can dry in 80% humidity? Dryfit, Coolmax? ShamWow? Cause I’m lookin’.
So it was 20 on the calendar, the first of four 20 milers on the schedule, and after this week of speedwork cut short-and cutting 2.5 off last weeks 18 miler, I was starting to feel like Ludicrous Speed as I have named the schedule was ridiculous.
But that was then, Sunday. Now, Tuesday, thinking about then, I knew that now, or then, as it was, was the time to really commit, so that soon, when then becomes now, I will look back and have done it. Because now you can’t go back to then, you will have just missed it. When? Just now. Got it?
Nick Calcott recently wrote me thinking about running the Paris Marathon, and asked how I got started. A long email followed which I have copied below. Like discussions of photography for non-photographers, discussions of running for non-runners are pretty boring. What isn’t boring is Nick’s work or his blog, 12thpress.
“Thanks for your note-I love getting random shout-outs. Plus I really like the Night Dance series and Nana’s house.
I looked at the paris marathon website faq and noted that they said they serve mineral water every 5km. Too funny. In new york they just open up the fire hydrant to fill garbage pails lined with trash bags and volunteers scoop paper cups of it up.
The first race I ran was last august this time, it was the nike 10k run–I had been running only since june but managed to finish ok. In the two months prior I was just running as I felt, often times every day, about 4 miles or so. What happened in the beginning is that I didn’t know or ignored the advice to step up training in 10% increments, and I started adding mileage too soon just to see if I could do it. I would run 6 miles one weekend, 8 the next, 10 after that, going up to 13. So in a month I think I went from running 12 miles per week to running 25, which was too much too soon on no base. so I got hurt.
Basically all the books and websites give similar advice. Runnersworld.com has a lot of free advice, and you can generate training plans based on your current level. I think what the advice would be is this: have a “base” of regular running, something like 20-25 miles per week before you start the 18 week training for the marathon. Since the Paris is April 11 that means you would start training roughly the beginning of February. And the base should be 6 months or more. So if you are running only 15 miles per week now you might want to slowly ramp that up over the fall to give yourself 4 months of base. (still with me?)
You might also want to and hopefully would enjoy doing some intermediate races in the fall, 10k’s are a great distance, and the Half is also a good distance. Doing these races will give you an idea what to expect running in races, and also about water management and food issues, race day prep, the bathroom! etc. Things that you want to have a grasp of before getting to a marathon. I did a bunch of half’s and 10′s all through my first winter running and loved them all, also loved winter running in general. what I would not give right now for a 32 degree morning! It is so much easier to run in cold I find. In terms of training for Paris you will have to deal with winter running.
So from the fall races you will get a sense of times, your 10K and half marathon times. All of the training plans online and in books predicate your training on your current fitness. This is what you were asking me. When you know that you run a 10K in 50 minutes then that will accurately predict you will run a marathon in 4 hours. Something like that. The reason this works is mountains of data over the years. So for example the plan on Runners World which is what I am using, takes inputs such as a recent 10k or half marathon time, the current number of miles per week you are used to running, and the training effort you want to exert, moderate, intense, severe, and generates an 16 week plan based on that. The plan is similar to other plans – it assumes the “new” thinking that you might not want to run every day- they have you running 4 of 7. You can cross train other days or rest. The thinking here is to avoid injury and overuse. The “old” thinking was that you just buried yourself in miles at a slow steady pace, which now is only one component of the whole training.
What they advocate now is three kinds of workouts- you have speed workouts like tempo runs and intervals to focus on speed, running form and increasing oxygen efficiency, increasing your lactate threshold and teaching the muscles to fire fast, then you have easy days where you run with low intensity to give some recovery, and then you also have the long run day where you go slow and long to increase time on your feet, train your muscles to burn fat calories stored in the liver not muscle stored sugar which helps you avoid hitting the wall (burning through all the glycogen in your muscles entirely, which happens around mile 20).
Combining these three kinds of workouts and optional cross training will give you the ability to run long, economically and finish strong without running mass mileage every day. It is better to be slightly undertrained than over trained and injured on race day. One book is Run Less Run Faster by the RunnersWorld staff.
On a monthly level you go through 3 week circuits of progressive overload and then you get a recovery week. You do this four times, and the mileage increases and the speed workouts get faster progressively. In the last two weeks of training you taper off so that you are well rested for the marathon day. Basically that is it.
You asked about picking a goal time for your marathon-it doesn’t exactly work like that. You can only train so much, so your goal time or marathon pace is dictated by your fitness level going in to the training minus what the training can reasonably hope to achieve. Knocking 30 sec/mile off is a lot. Trying to improve beyond the plan limits risks injury. All of the training plans generally hew to the 10% increment. Once you have some intermediate races done this fall and some times for that, the training plan will dictate a reasonable goal time. For a first marathon I would say completion is a great goal in itself! You only have one first, and Paris is such a spectacular course that you might want to just focus on enjoying all the sights and sounds (meaning try to run no-ipod) and maybe take some pictures. You also want to finish strong, so that it is enjoyable, so speed is not a big issue.
If you read my account of the NJ marathon which was my first, I think it was “an experience” which was owing to the rain, the double loop course, etc. I knew I could finish so it was mainly to do it. Maybe not a great first experience but I was not in pain or cramping or bargaining heavily, so by that measure it was a great success.
My second marathon will be NY this fall, and even tho I am better trained now, I am approaching this with a great deal of trepidation, no matter what, it is one hell of a long way. anything can happen. So you really have to dedicate yourself and not shortcut the training. My last track workout was sub-optimal in the heat, so I give myself a pass because of that, but it bothers me to make excuses, because there are no excuses at mile 20. You have 6.2 more.
Very long email. good luck and keep in touch with what is going on. Take the plunge and commit and you will not be sorry you did.”
If you see me wave. This is a new route across midtown that lets me use both sides of the island without going through lower manhattan which is a tourist mess. Last time out in Battery Park with the crowds I made a runner sandwich with another runner, think Hadron Collider and I was an electron and he was an atom. Smoosh! I think a quark fell out or that was his keys. Dunno. He got peanut butter in my chocolate, I got chocolate in his peanut butter. Enough metaphors.
Update to Team for Kids fundraising and my marathon training. We sit at $470 of $2500 dollars currently. The deadline for the the 50% was extended to August 29.
The heat has put a serious dent in my training schedule, last night was a track workout of 3×1 mile at 7:08/mile, with .5 mile rest in between and for the first time I visited the Redhook park oval to do it. Tough sledding, I kept forgetting what lap I was on-and Mr. Garmin was making it difficult to keep track-a plain old watch would have been better. Didn’t matter, my heart rate was pegged up against the wall anyway…memories of high school practices with the gym teacher exhorting us through wind sprints. In fact there was what looked to be a track club or high school group doing 400m repeats, a group of about twenty teens, the expected mix of diffidence, lollygagging and avoidance. Some seriously fast folks too. They would all start out as a group and quickly the bell curve would appear, the lone runner way out in front, the middle of the pack, and a back of the pack bunny or two. I think everyone was feeling mr. pukey nearby. These last few days have been difficult to keep to the plan-targets have not been met! It is all going awry! Chaos! I am hoping that it is the heat that is responsible and not my choice of the pursuit of Ludicrous Speed in my training goals. Trying to make a 3:30 marathon may not be realistic for me…?
Slideluck potshow came and went and I received a lot of great feedback on the presentation-thank you all. I will keep working on the project when the light returns in late September. Here is the piece:
Image left of James Worrell circa 1985, Iowa proving that the kids are alright. I am certain of meeting James before circa New York Magazine 1990′s but that feels like a world away. Anyway in the spirit of childhood athleticism he responded to the TFK challenge and made a big contribution to my fundraising.
Both of us had slideshows in last Thursday’s Slideluck Potshow, you can see his here.
Week 5 begins today and features an 18 miler sunday.
